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A German study on patients who underwent FDG-PET/CT scans for neoplastic disease found that "the combination of a calcified plaque sum greater than 15 and a mean TBR of greater than 1.7 identified patients at highest risk for a future vascular event." The finding suggests that patients undergoing PET/CT tests for cancer diagnosis or staging could also know their atherogenic risk, the researchers said.

Related Summaries

The use of FDG-PET/CT modified radiotherapy decisions in 34% of 104 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, according to a study published in Lung Cancer. Use of FDG-PET/CT also improved tumor staging compared with the use of standard CT and improved the identification of patients likely to benefit from a curative plan, researchers said. Use of FDG-PET/CT data may also reduce unneeded irradiation and costs in patients who qualify for a palliative program, according to researchers.

A study of patients with head and neck squamous cell cancer found that higher standardized uptake values, or SUVs, on FDG-PET/CT scans after treatment can be linked to the risk of cancer recurrence. "We were interested to know whether PET scans could help predict which patients might respond better by scanning them early in the course of treatment," said the study's lead author.

An Austrian study on 22 patients with suspected spondylodiscitis and who were experiencing constant back pain found that FDG-PET/CT had higher sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in detecting the disease than MRI. The results indicate that FDG-PET/CT could be a useful method in diagnosing the disease, the researchers said.

A German study on patients who underwent FDG-PET/CT scans for neoplastic disease found that "the combination of a calcified plaque sum greater than 15 and a mean TBR of greater than 1.7 identified patients at highest risk for a future vascular event." The finding suggests that patients undergoing PET/CT tests for cancer diagnosis or staging could also know their atherogenic risk, the researchers said.

Researchers used FDG-PET/CT to evaluate maximum standardized uptake value, total lesion glycolysis and changes between the two measurements in patients with osteosarcoma before and after initial chemotherapy.
The research "comes definitively on the side of PET/CT being able to predict survival, which means that one can theoretically modify the therapy ahead of time, instead of waiting for the tumor to not respond to typical therapies," the lead researcher said.